In the United States, a meal travels about 1,500 miles on average, before reaching your plate. Eating locally-produced foods reduces fuel consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, and provides a variety of health benefits. Growing, harvesting, and transporting our food is one of the largest energy consumers in the U.S. Ways to facilitate local food production include:
- Transform your lawn in your front or back yard into a food garden –water your vegetables and fruits rather than your grass. *
- Organize a community garden program in your neighborhood.
- Compost your food scraps in a home-based compost pile.
- Work with your City Council and Staff to create regulation that requires organic material (food scraps, paper and paper board, leaves, branches) to be composted so they don’t end up in landfill and contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.**
- Create a private/public partnership and/or municipally funded organization to support urban agriculture and a commercial-scale compost facility in your area.
- Work with City planners to include zoning that supports urban agriculture in your municipal comprehensive plan.
- Assess and create an inventory of vacant public/private lots and open space that could be ripe for local food growing.
Farmer’s Markets are a growing solution to community-based agriculture to support local farmers and shift to a more local economy. From 1994-2006, Farmer’s Markets have tripled in the U.S. from 1,755 to 4,385, according to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. Farmer’s Markets located in urban settings allow more people to walk, bike or ride mass transit to purchase their produce.
Relocalization is a large and growing movement across the U.S. that emphasized the importance of eating food grown within 100 miles of your home. Produce grown locally and without pesticides or chemicals tastes better and is much healthier for us, our children, and the planet. Plus, it’s great to meet and appreciate the farmer who worked hard to grow the food on your table.
*An estimated 23 million acres of lawns are available in the U.S. that could be transformed into gardens.
** Methane is a by-product of organic matter breaking down in a landfill. Methane is 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Keeping organic matter out of a landfill could immediately help reduce our carbon emissions by 25%. Plus, using the organic matter that currently goes into the trash to make compost for the soil will puts carbon back into the ground and nourishes the soil to yield better produce.
